Tag: 2013

44. Yes. Two more than the ultimate answer. Or as some old friends would remind me, my CET ranking – in medical. It was 37 the last year and ended up much higher than I thought it would, simply because, unlike the last two years, this one didn’t have a magnum opus that took weeks together to finish. While 2012 saw Parva and some biggies like Murakami’s ‘The Wind-up Bird Chronicle’ and 2011 saw David Copperfield, this one lacked any such biggies. In fact there were very few 400 pagers. The only one that could be called a biggie was ‘The Emperor of Maladies’. Also, the last half saw a record 25 books compared to the 19 in the first half – possibly due to more holidays spent at home. So there.

Either way, surprisingly this didn’t get in the way of much traveling. It was a satisfying year travel-wise. Also, books had to contend with monthly Caravan readings. As always, will set out with a lower target of 25-30 books for the year. Hope to do more slow reading, if not less reading.

And without much ado, here’s the list. I haven’t done much review writing on my blog this year, restricting them mainly to Goodreads. So links will point to reviews in Goodreads.Continue reading “List from 2013”→

So it ends. As far as years go, this has to clock as one of the worst in recent memory. Nothing worked. No plans were even remotely close to making and at every juncture was faced with one or the other issue. Also (literally) brought home to me the importance of health – both mine and my parents’.

There was the accident in May, repeated throat infections, spondilytis for Dad, Mom’s anxiety and stress related issues. It was a year with regular visits to the doctor. I even gave up house hunting seeing no point in doing anything major with so many things to deal with. 500K gave me enough stress refusing to turn up most times, sometimes not stopping, reliability plummeting regularly. On the positive side, nothing major happened for such a year I guess.

Dec 31st had to deal with construction workers banging on iron rods right in front of the house and asking them to move it to some other side. As with all ‘requests’ to construction workers this did not go anywhere. The police got called, a royal racket ensued until they turned up and eventually they moved things to the front of the neighbor’s to avoid a row and I sent the cops back. It’s been that sort of a year. A whole week blissfully taken off only to have to listen to constant construction noise from both front and side of the house as the whole area turns into a construction zone. Must be something people are seeing about the end of the year as construction’s been going on at a lot of empty sites. Also, apparently am becoming increasingly more stressed out and querulous. Something to work on the next year. Might be good to start with being less idealistic over little things.

I wouldn’t complain too much about the year though. Not doing much else meant spending normal time and energy at work and got duly rewarded too. Things couldn’t be better at the work front, although can see some stress building up there. Will have to back myself I guess.

Towards the end things seemed to be getting to some semblance of balance. The buses more regular after regular, relentless complaints (not sure how much because of me, but I’d like to say I played a part) and things getting back to normal at home. Maybe 2013 would be the year to look forward to. With a year like 2012 I can only hope for the best. Not a fan of new year’s celebrations, I see it as just a counter ticking over. But with years like this, I guess they do hold out some hope for fresh beginnings.

On the blog front though, somehow ended up with 4500 hits over the year !! Averaging close to 400 per month. To put that in context, till then the number of hits stood at 3200 over 2 years at an average of 5 per day! Thanks to all those dropping by for whatever reasons. And a big thanks to Google too for sending them along. Also, managed 38 entries over the year – December clearly the culprit with only one while I try to get in at least 2 on dry months. Maybe reaching a stage where I won’t fill in with filler posts?

The book list will be next. Will need to cajole a few cousins to do that first or along with me before that.